[N(poster)] ポスターセッション

英語

[1O21] The Relationship between Family Educational Background and University Choice in Cambodia

*土久岡 真美¹ (1. Kobe University)

キーワード：

Higher Education、Family Educational Background、Family Involvement

This study examines the relationship between family educational background and students’ university choice. Parental involvement is a key factor, and parents’ educational background has been shown to strongly influence students’ decisions about universities. Compared to developed countries, there is greater variation in educational background within societies such as Cambodia. Yet, limited research has explored how the educational background of both parents and other family members relates to students’ university choice. This study aims to clarify how family educational background relates to students’ university choices. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with high school and first-year university students and their family members, and the data were analyzed qualitatively. The findings reveal that when parents have lower levels of education, elder siblings, uncles, and aunts often play a more significant role in university choice than parents themselves. Moreover, the greater the gap in years of schooling between students and their family members, the weaker the family’s involvement tends to be, which in turn makes the decision-making more difficult for students. Families with university-level education were found to be actively engaged in students’ decision-making, while the involvement of families with only primary education was more limited.Nevertheless, variation was observed even within the category of families with only primary education. For example, differences emerged between those who had received only about three years of primary education and those who had completed grade 5 or the final grade, in terms of parents’ interest in students’ university choice and the advice they provided. These findings suggest that simple categorizations based solely on broad educational levels are insufficient to fully capture how families influence students’ decision-making. The study concludes that future research should focus on measuring the years of schooling gap between students and family members to more accurately assess its impact on university choice.